DAMON BACK BEHIND THE WHEEL

F1 CHAMP TRIES AN ASTON MARTIN

It’s not often an Formula 1 world champion gets in a car and says “everything is new again”. It’s not often they chuck it off into the gravel either, but Damon Hill is not embarrassed. He’s learning everything as if it was new again.

Why, you might, ask? Surely an F1 champion can get into a car and drive anything quickly straight away?

Not when the car is a piece of advanced engineering. It’s an Aston Martin GT4, but it features an incredibly advanced hand control system developed to help disabled drivers compete on a level playing field.

Team BRIT, as you can read about below ( see sidebar), is the team, and its goal is clear; to reach the Le Mans 24 Hours by 2020.

Hill is quick to learn and soon has the Aston purring around the track. There’s no comment when asked if he put the car into the gravel on purpose, given the polarising TV presenter Adrian Chiles was in the passenger seat.

But jokes aside, the 1996 F1 champion was equal with an injured serviceman with two amputated limbs.

They both had to learn the hand controls and Hill thinks it’s a good comparison. “Every racing driver knows what it’s like: things in the car become automatic,” says Hill. “It’s amazing that you find yourself doing other stuff in the process of driving, which is not possible unless you’ve made the driving side of things completely automatic.”

The problem with that, of course, is that when Hill jumps into the Aston, he tries to do everything automatically. So what would have been a downchange on the Williams FW18, is the brake in the Aston. That’s how you end up in the gravel.

In typical Hill fashion, he’s not embarrassed. He thinks it demonstrates what the servicemen have to go through when they’ve had brain injuries or the loss of limbs, among other things.

“The problem with that [driving the car instinctively without thinking] is it’s hard to go back and change things,” says Hill. “It’s a good analogy, if you’d suddenly had an injury, losing fingers or limbs for example, everything is new again and they have to relearn what they’re doing, like I had to do getting in this car.

“Some of the guys have had brain injuries as well, so they have had to go through the process of learning how to think. One of the ways to accelerate the process, is to put yourself in demanding situations. The mind is a wonderful thing, how it adapts to new challenges.”

The car itself was turned around in a couple of weeks, but you’d never tell. Complete with retro Mizuno racing boots, Hill took me for a spin and it reacts completely normally. The only difference is the level of tech employed.

Developed in conjunction with MME Motorsport, the steering wheel is fully customiseable, in the sense that you can have any paddle control brakes, throttle or a gear change. So if the driver only has a left arm, the key controls can be loaded to the left to help them.

The most impressive thing about the system is it’s plug in and play for each driver. Every racer will have their own steering wheel, with their settings pre-determined. That makes pitstop changes easier, which is vital in long distance races.

The system is also clever enough to allow an instantaneous switch from hand controls to conventional operation, so if a driver is able to use the paddles as normal, they are also catered for. It’s a catch-all system.

There’s a couple of drawbacks, like the weight added for the seven ECUS for the braking system alone (yes, seven!), but the ethos behind the project is to allow the car to perform as equally as possible against able-bodied drivers.

“Hand-control road cars are fairly rudimentary,” says team manager Graham Horgan. “There are a few disabled drivers racing with normal road car hand controls, but it’s difficult when they are racing in spite of the hand controls instead of with the assistance of them. We thought we’d try and use some technology to try and allow drivers using hand controls to be equalised.

“Most disabled sports are unique to disabled people. What we’re showing is that people with all kinds of disabilities can compete on equal terms and maybe even win against able-bodied drivers.”

With hand controls and disability in motorsport very much in the spotlight thanks to injured singleseater racer Billy Monger, Team BRIT is doing its part to make racing on an even playing field possible. Monger took his ARDS test in one of the squad’s Fun Cup cars, and it’s set to bring a number of disabled drivers into motorsport on its ultimate quest to reach Le Sarthe. ■